Professor

Sandra

G.

Mayson

Sandra (Sandy) Mayson is Professor of Law at University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School, where she teaches Criminal Law, Evidence, and seminars related to criminal justice reform and legal theory. She is an Associate Director of the Institute for Law & Philosophy. Before joining Penn, she was on the faculty of University of Georgia School of Law, where she won the C. Ronald Ellington Award for Excellence in Teaching and the John C. O’Byrne Memorial Award for Significant Contributions Furthering Student-Faculty Relations. 

Professor Mayson's scholarship spans criminal law, constitutional law, and legal theory, with a focus on preventive restrictions on liberty. Her articles have appeared in the Yale Law Journal, Harvard Law Review, Stanford Law Review, Law & Philosophy, and Criminal Law & Philosophy. She is an Associate Editor of the journal Law & Philosophy. Her co-authored article "Bail at the Founding" (Harvard Law Review, 2024) won the William Nelson Cromwell Foundation's Legal History Article-of-the-Year Award in 2025. 

Mayson is also engaged in pretrial law reform. She served as the Associate Reporter for the Uniform Law Commission’s Pretrial Release & Detention Act, co-authors amicus briefs in lawsuits challenging aspects of money-bail systems, and advises public and private stakeholders on pretrial reform initiatives. 

Prior to her academic career, Mayson practiced as a trial attorney and Equal Justice Works Fellow at Orleans Public Defenders. She clerked for Judge Dolores K. Sloviter on the U.S. Third Circuit and Judge L. Felipe Restrepo in the Eastern District of Pennsylvania.